Streams

Listener Challenge: Are We Alone in the Universe?

For all of our scientific advances, there are still many questions that remain unanswered. In the new book The Where, the Why, and the How, artists take a stab at explaining those mysteries. For this challenge, we asked you to create an illustration to answer the following question:

I moved to Chicago in September and was immediately in awe with the architecture, especially with the stoic but eerie details of the Harold Washington Library. One night I had a dream that the animal statues mounted on the library conjured a storm so powerful that it blew off the glass roof, releasing all the books to the wind.

Within our world there is life unseen by the naked eye. By comparison, we are microscopic to the outer solar systems much bigger than our own. Within our own bodies, millions of living cells, within a spoonful of dirt... Seemingly finite, Earth, only one millionth the size of our sun, yet by the galaxy's standards, miniscule, and, can fit a million times into a sun in an outer solar system and so on... To deny that there is other life within our universe is to deny the billions of microscopic bacteria and millions of fungi within one teaspoon of healthy soil. Perhaps we are just microscopic cells in an untouched puddle of time in a bigger galaxy vulnerable to a cosmic convergence. Perhaps we are the microscopic cells that affect or are affected by a life much bigger much bigger than we can see or imagine.

Comments [1]

Lynne Thermann
from New York

I'm late to this challenge, but I've got to say that I love this image. Alien people, somewhat like us but very different, gazing into their night sky & wondering, just like we do. It's a really, really lovely image.

We are not alone in the universe although for now it appears that we are the only life forms of our kind. We may never make contact other life forms that we can communicate with but odds are that they must be out there.

The 'Bubbleheaded Wingless PineNeedler' is a small painting I made about a goofy little invented bird. I was compelled when watching David Attenborough's nature series about how New Zealand was once an island of birds. With fewer natural predators than on the rest of the planet, they evolved into various dorky shapes and forms. I often imagine in my paintings how we managed to get the evolutionary edge. Perhaps in another universe BIRDS are on top! Birds reign supreme and and humans are like insects feeding off the remains of an opulent BIRD existence. Copyright Sarah Olson, www.sarah-olson.com

The question itself is so self referential it cannot be asked without considering who "we" are. In our quest to discover the other, we are constantly thrown up against our own idea of self, and the meaning of existence.

In my illustration, I have tried to capture the 3 main elements of life on earth (in my limited understanding). These are: carbon, water and solar energy. Behind my illustration of these elements is the earth. The earth, in this illustration, is connected to the universe through 'streams' of stars and galaxies. At the end of some of these streams is nothing. At the end of one of these streams is the possibility (but only the possibility) of life elsewhere. The possibility of life is illustrated by a planet that contains 3 unknown elements that may lead to life elsewhere. I have illustrated a question mark with four surrounding dots to mirror the Lewis structure of the carbon atom, suggesting that there needs to be some atom, similar to carbon (such as silicon) that could form the basis of life as long as other essential elements are present.

Elsewhere in the universe, just over the bend from where his friends fill the afternoon with play, Jagdalack sits and considers the notion of whether or he and his kind are the only ones in all the cosmos (well he himself specifically) who ponder this very question.

WNYC 93.9 FM and AM 820 are New York's flagship public radio
stations, broadcasting the finest programs from NPR, PRI and American Public Media, as well as a wide range of award-winning local
programming. WNYC is a division of
New York Public Radio.